


When Cosima finally meets Kira.

by LeftPawedPolarBear



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 20:16:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1721213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeftPawedPolarBear/pseuds/LeftPawedPolarBear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.”<br/>-Charles Darwin, "On the Origin of Species"</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Cosima finally meets Kira.

       As fate would have it, Cosima ended up being the last member of Clone Club to meet Kira.

       By rights, she should have been one of the first; she should have met her--her _niece_ \-- before Helena, before Rachel, before Art or Paul or even Delphine, because friends and lovers, allies and enemies all come and go, but the bond that she and Alison and Sarah share can’t really be relegated to a single category. Like them, it defies definition. Like them, it is emotional and cliché and unprecedented all at once.

       So yeah, Cosima was just a little pissed that she’s the last one to meet Sarah’s daughter.

       She sat in Alison’s living room--there’s thankfully no need for the basement and secrecy anymore--with one hand absentmindedly running through her hair--she hasn’t even admitted to Delphine how relieved she is that she didn’t have to lose her dreads--and watches Sarah pull up in Cal’s old pickup. She felt a slight twinge in her gut.

__________________________________________________________________________

_Kira trots along beside her mother, one hand clasped in Sarah’s grip and the other clutching a pad of paper and a pack of crayons. Cosima smiles and reaches out for her with both arms. Kira, evidently feeling none of the unease that is currently winding it’s way through Cosima’s stomach, drops the paper and crayons on the coffee table and places her hands in Cosima’s—not calloused like Sarah’s, not manicured like Alison’s, just a child’s hands._

_Cosima leans forward, daring to place a gentle kiss on the girl’s forehead._

_“Hello Kira.”_

__________________________________________________________________________ 

       Perhaps Rachel Duncan was the first self-aware “pro-clone,” but Cosima was aware in other ways that neither her fellow clones, nor Delphine, nor anybody else would ever understand. It was the blessing and the curse of being a scientist who also happened to be the subject of an illegal cloning experiment.

       Cosima _understood_. She had studied the history of cloning, followed the latest developments in the field, knew Dolly’s case history better than she knew the eating habits of her own pet fish (may they rest in peace). She had decided to devote her life to these wonders long before she realized that she was devoting her life to—well, her _life_. And so while Beth began mixing medications and Alison began drinking, while Sarah raged and Alison mourned, Cosima flourished, fed by the wonder and excitement of it all, protected by a shield of knowledge and distance.

       That was the blessing.

__________________________________________________________________________

_“Hello Auntie Cosima.”_

_Kira does not look up initially, instead peering intently at the tattoos on Cosima’s arms as she traces them with her fingers—first the dandelion, then the nautilus. Cosima feels little goose bumps rise up as Kira follows the spiral pattern of the shell with her fingertip. Then she looks up._

_“Mummy said if I asked nicely, you would tell me about the pictures on your arms.”_

_Cosima glances at Sarah, who shrugs and nods. She looks back at Kira, grins, and winks. “Sure thing, kid. When I’m done with you, you’re going to be begging for a tattoo and your mum is going to_ kill _me.”_

__________________________________________________________________________

       Of course, she soon realized that her shield was made of glass—strong stuff, but brittle, and when it shattered it inevitably sent shards in her direction, striking the places it had defended so well before.

      Her pride.

      Her lungs.

      Her heart.  

      And that was part of the curse. Cracking the code only to discover she was not a person, had never been a real person, that she lived and breathed and died as someone else’s property. Cutting into the flesh of a corpse with her own eyes (closed) and her own mouth (motionless) and even that little dry patch of skin between her eyebrows that Sarah had joked about so casually—cutting her(self) open and seeing the cause of her own pain jutting out in the form of ugly tumors from the wasted organs of another “her” she never had the chance to meet. Seeing and understanding these things that Sarah, for all her lion’s heart and mother’s instincts and Alison with her fears and suburban responsibilities would never have the ability, nor the motivation to see with her.

      But all of that was behind her. She had received the punishment of recovery and the reward of being recovered, she had been further blessed with the warning for the future that knowledge can be dangerous, and further cursed with memories she will not easily forget, but it was over now. She deserved, they all deserved for it to be over.

      So being scared of a nine-year-old seemed a little ridiculous.

__________________________________________________________________________

_Kira listens as Cosima explains about nature and order and chaos and she when she begins she makes an effort to use terms Kira will understand, talking about the wind and how some rectangles are prettier than others, but she inevitably gets carried away, gushing about golden ratios and the life cycles of various plants, her hand gestures becoming wilder and more frequent as she lets her love of biology and the universe and life take control._

      _Kira starts out standing in front of her, but as Cosima talks Kira sits down on the sofa next to her and begins playing with Cosima’s hair, letting the dreadlocks run over her palm, winding them around her fingers. Cosima doesn’t mind; she simply turns her torso to face Kira again._

__________________________________________________________________________

       But the curse wasn’t fully gone. Sarah remained the only clone to have a biological child (Cosima tried not to think about Helena) and Cosima, Alison, and the rest remained infertile. Cosima knew it broke Alison’s heart, but she herself didn’t really mind. She’s not the motherly type, which made thinking about Kira all the more uncomfortable.

       Cosima had learned in high school that, paradoxically, the children of two sets of identical twins are actually biological siblings. She always thought that was a little weird and more than a little hilarious, in an incestuous sort of way. Now, she thought about it seriously. She knew children only share 50% of their DNA with each parent, and she knew that the nature vs. nurture argument is bullshit, that the reality is really a combination of the two, but all that told her is that Kira was, in more ways than one, half Cosima. Half of Kira—the maternal half and the nature half—was Cosima. She knew that Alison made a comment like this to Felix once, when Kira in the hospital after being hit by a car, and at the time she scoffed at Alison’s overly dramatic and presumptuous reaction, but Alison wasn’t wrong, not completely. In a very real way, Kira belonged to all of them. And Cosima didn’t know if she’s ready for that responsibility.

__________________________________________________________________________

       _When Cosima finally comes down from her science high and notices that Kira is beginning to lose interest, she reluctantly ends her tattoo monologue._

_“Do you like to draw?” she asks, indicating in the direction of the paper and crayons on the table._

_Kira nods and reaches over Cosima’s lap to retrieve the pad. “I like to draw Mummy and her sisters.”_

_“Mummy and—have you drawn me?” Cosima gapes at her._

_“You and Auntie Alison, and also Uncle Felix and Helena!” Kira doesn’t seem to notice Cosima’s shocked expression as she opens the sketchpad to a picture of what is very obviously Sarah in a leather jacket, then flips to Alison in her pink running suit and then—yes, those are unmistakably dreadlocks._

_“I—whoa, cool! You drew me in my favorite dress!” She fights to hide the tremor in her voice. She has a place in this girl’s life, a place in her heart. She means something to her._

_“You were wearing it when I saw you talking to Mummy on the computer,” says Kira._

__________________________________________________________________________

     Part of her knew it was absolutely ridiculous to let this get to her, of all things. Christ, she’s a human clone, and until recently she was dying of some mysterious cancer that was making her lungs want to jump out of her body through her mouth, and a child gave her pause?

     But _progeny_ , man. Progeny is a weird and wondrous thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, friends. I normally don't write fanfiction because I normally leave it for people who can actually write it, but every once and a while a scene rattles around inside my head until I have to let it out in some form or another.  
> Also, I owe a bazillion thank-yous to glynnbearboo (hellacophine on Tumblr) and junk-food-for-thought (on Tumblr) for reading this over and pointing out simple and subtle things alike. Like tense. Silly tense.


End file.
